May 12--Rick Schummer: "Inspiring Everyday Practical IntelliSense"

Our next meeting will be Tuesday, May 12. Rick Schummer will present the “director’s cut” of his Southwest Fox 2014 session “Inspiring Everyday Practical IntelliSense”

Abstract: Microsoft introduced Visual FoxPro's highly extensible IntelliSense capability 14 years ago with the release of Visual FoxPro 7.0. I remember seeing the first live demo of IntelliSense at DevCon and recall the chills it sent up my spine because I knew this new feature would instantly make me more productive. This single VFP feature has been heralded as "the greatest thing since sliced bread" and is, at least in my mind, the single biggest productivity boost to developers. Yet to this day I feel I under-use it and wish I would take the time to make things better for myself.

This session reveals how IntelliSense works using scripts and settings, and how it can be implemented, using real world examples authored by numerous Visual FoxPro developers. The implementation will be demonstrated and analyzed with the number one goal of inspiring you to boost your own productivity in the VFP IDE, and later to share those items that might help other developers in the FoxPro community.

Discover the details needed to take advantage of Quick Info, Member Lists, Command and Keyword expansion, Types, and MRU Lists. Techniques include leveraging the FoxCode object, text merge, and more. If time allows, we will explore other IntelliSense implementations and extensions like MY, IntellisenseX, ISX, and FoxCodePlus.

Bio: Rick Schummer is the president and lead geek at White Light Computing, Inc., headquartered in southeast Michigan, USA where the team guides the customer's Information Technology investment toward success. He enjoys working with top-notch developers, thrives on the mode of continuous learning, has a passion for developing software using best practices, strives to surpass customer expectations, and shares his knowledge with others whenever he can. After hours you might find him creating developer tools that improve developer productivity, or writing articles for his favorite technology journals and his blog.

Rick is a co-author of VFPX: Open Source Treasure for the VFP Developer, Making Sense of Sedna and SP2, Visual FoxPro Best Practices for the Next Ten Years, What's New In Nine: Visual FoxPro's Latest Hits, Deploying Visual FoxPro Solutions, MegaFox: 1002 Things You Wanted To Know About Extending Visual FoxPro, and 1001 Things You Always Wanted to Know About Visual FoxPro. He is a regular presenter at user groups across North America and is founding member and Secretary of the Detroit Area Fox User Group (DAFUG). Rick is the lead organizer of the Southwest Fox Conference, and is a regular presenter at other conferences in North America, Europe, and Australia. He is an administrator of VFPX, and a Microsoft Visual FoxPro MVP from 2002 to 2011. Rick was awarded the FoxPro Lifetime Achievement Award in October 2010.